Mine would probably be flash memory and internal power supply's.
Mine would probably be flash memory and internal power supply's.
Carts and battery backup
mudkipz.
Oldskool: The transition to CD based data storage (particularly Mega CD)
Recent: Wireless (radio) controllers
Yeah, the Rez peripheral was pretty mind boggling.
Fucking Gameboys with backlit screens!
I hope you wear a condomQuote:
Originally Posted by Rusty Venture
Always.
But I don't know why it took 15 friggin years to get a gameboy you didn't have to tilt at weird angles just to see the damn thing.
I love the example pics!Quote:
Originally Posted by Lastcallhall
For me it's got to be radio wireless controllers. An old invention really (the Atari 2600 had some) but one that has taken its sweet time to become standard.
Mine would be the wireless controllers, VMU, and controllers with memory card ports built in. That is pure brilliant!
Is this why Nintendo put a power plug on the bottom of the Gameboy ColorQuote:
Originally Posted by Rusty Venture
I would say emulation but the industry didn't invent that. It is like a childhood dream coming true.
One of them for me is the headphone jack on the Genesis, I don't see why all systems don't have this.
NeoGeo arcade cabinets. I loved bringing my headphones to play Viewpoint. :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by kokujin
Online gaming!
The death of motion control, cause I for one am fat & lazy!!!
Wireless controllers that work well & remote power buttons.
light guns, expecially on home consoles! and mic support.
The ability to save game progress.
Putting pause on the controller.
There is the D-pad though...
Good choice, sir! Headphone functions are nice, but having the ability to save your game, and have anywhere from one to six games in a cabinet really makes them the perfect arcade cabs. I love my MVS setups.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zz Badnusty
The Sega Channel is another bit of tech that I'll always fondly remember.
Wireless controllers, particularly ones which don't require line-of-sight to function.
-Rob
Teh eye bleedin' 3D Glazzez!
Old-School - Watching as the D-Pad supplanted the Joystick. Having the screen scroll instead of jerking from screen to screen.
New-School - Hard drives replacing memory cards for storage, but still making memory cards available for storage. PS3 using USB drives for storage instead of a proprietary format.
In all seriousness though, My favourite advancement in gaming technology is larger game worlds with a lot going on. More RAM in a console for the most part = larger game worlds. I wonder how long it will be until there is a game that has a map the size of the world (in real life measurements).
Longer and Longer levels. Mmmmm...
Atari 5200 says hello.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nunzio
Two Words:
Side Scrolling!
The d-pads Sega got on 6 buttoners, JP/late Saturn controllers and Saturn 3D pad
guess it has to be a gun for me (not the flashyscreen nes zapper)
Wait you mean that AWESOME, NEW!!!!, HIT, FAD, BADASSSSSSS, technology that I have for my 1986 SMS?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasper061992
Flash memory is a good one, that allowed the increase of writable storage without the cost issues of SRAM (allowing the large saves in some N64 games at reasonable cost and, of course, PlayStation memory cards -and everything following that).Quote:
Originally Posted by Defolto
In terms of mass writable storage on consoles, the Xbox's hard drive is very significant too, as is HDDs on the 360 and PS3. (still much more cost effective than flash memory in terms of storage capacity)
Built-in power supplies still aren't there either across the board, it varies a ton: and for the record, consoles had built-in power supplies from the late 70s onward.
The main issue is really having a dongle vs a brick plug, dongles are so much more convenient regardless.
Battery backup had it's problems early on (Final Fantasy seems to have had more issues than Zelda -though Atari would have had their high score cart well before either had original plans for the 7800 gone through -it was ready in 1984).Quote:
Originally Posted by zetastrike
Battery backup is extremely simple though, the only issue was SRAM getting cheap enough to reasonably allow it.
Programmable consoles were significant though pushing for programs on ROM instead of the dedicated consoles (ie "pong consoles") prior to that.
So carts are really significant for sure.
Those aren't new either, jut a new resurgence. (radio based controllers were the first wireless console controllers -the 2700's garage door opener derived controllers, though canceled, then the bulky wireless 2600 joysticks -also rather battery hungry)Quote:
Originally Posted by JDB1983
The first modern high-frequency wireless controller on the market for a console didn't come until the wavebird. (you had PC stuff common before that though)
Because nintendo wanted their hardware as cheap and small as possible. ;) (mainly the size issue, though that wouldn't explain why they wouldn't offer a bulkier high-end model with backlighting and more batteries) Conversely it's odd that Sega (or atari) didn't come out with cheaper, smaller, less batter hungry unlit versions of their handhelds. (if it was either or, Nintendo certainly did the right thing, but why not both???)Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty Venture
Mic support as in the Famicom and N64, or as in headsets used for online gaming?Quote:
Originally Posted by Awesomekong64
Yep, that's significant too, and the analog stick: and in both cases you have early examples and cases of it becoming a mass market standard. (d pad grew from a gradual adaptation of handheld control vs the joystick -actually sort of a growth of push buttons hybridized with the joystick mechanism -from some arcade games and handheld LED sports games, then you had touchpads and discs like the intellivision, microvision, and 3rd party controllers for the VCS -a rubber disc shaped pad for 8-direction joystick control, I forget the name)Quote:
Originally Posted by Defolto
The first cross shaped d-pad was on Nintendo's game and watch line I believe.
On top of that, there's the gamepad controller design in its own right. (the vectrex and famicom really being the first to have that sort of thing outside of handheld game devices)
Red and Cyan or Sega's LCD shutters?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasper061992
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nunzio
He didn't say anything about it not being the 5200 to do that. ;) Or the analog stick, or 4 controller ports, or the start or the reset buttons on the controller. (I'd argue Vectrex was the first controller with a really good analog joystick or thumbstick -rather like that of an RC car/boat/plane transmitter, plus it was in a gamepad like form factor in parallel with the famicom in Japan)Quote:
Originally Posted by Zz Badnusty
The 1979 Atari 400/800 was the first electronic game console with 4 joystick ports (VCS allowed 4 paddles and I think some pong consoles had 4 players too, but the 400 and 800 were the first for actual 4 player joystick -or 8 player paddle support on a microcomputer based game platform -ie CPU based/programmable consoles, not dedicated/discrete logic game hardware). If you get down to semantics, the 400 is more the game console of the 2. (the 800 is more professionally oriented, though the base hardware grew out of plans for hardware to succeed the VCS)
But this thread isn't about WHO was the one to introduce said technology, just the tech itself: unless you want this sort of discussion:
http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic...-the-industry/
As for the topic, I'd say the most important single advancement for video games is the actual arrival of affordable mass market CPUs and program memory (both RAM and ROM), that allowed the first generation of programmable consoles and home computers and beyond.
As for favorite... maybe the advent of 3D games, though that happened very early on, but didn't become mainstream until later. (the actual time it began would depend on the distinction from pseudo 3D and real 3D games and 3D rendering vs 3D game engine or vice versa, or if you need both to be "real 3D" -I think Elite at least could be considered 3D)
In terms of technology, that could go in line with hardware 3D acceleration, but that wouldn't be exclusively the case either, you could do all that in software, so the only issue would be advances in CPU performance and some coprocessors -FPUs, DSPs, etc. (also not 3D hardware specific, and for that matter, hardware texture mapping, shading, filtering, etc wouldn't be 3D per se either: polygon rasterization would be and perspective correction generally implies 3D as well, but at a certain point that's down to semantics)
I think the poster might not have meant for that line of thinking though as the rest of the discussion didn't go into the graphics/sound department so much as general control/display/peripheral/features and such.
And in that line of thinking I'm really not sure what I'd go with.
I would say battery back up. I recently plugged in Sonic 3 and it still had all my high scores and saves from at least 1999 or 2000.
This might be true, but the GBA SP coming out not that long after the GBA was sucker punch to the balls.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
I'll forgo talking about their current DS revisions that add dumb shit like "slightly larger screens", that backlit screen was a necessary jump that should have been in the GBA.
And that goofy connector that allowed you to use headphones on the SP? Pure wallet fleecing.
The SP didn't add backlighting either, but the white LEDs plus diffusion system (lower power usage, and still able to turn off the light), and while LEDs would have been expensive earlier on. (and not available at all in the early 90s)Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty Venture
You could have had similar diffusion systems using incandescent bulbs like some watches, but that's more power usage and lower brightness than similar sized LEDs. (still probably would have been a good idea with on/off switch for lighting -though there's also the issue of lights burning out) They could also have simply used much earlier and cheaper LEDs: red LEDs would have been the first to fall into that category. (for the grayscale gameboy at least that would have been OK) There was the Game boy light, but that was Japan only and very late. (also using that transflective indiglow lighting common to later digital watches -vs the older incandescent sidelighting -the latter still applicable for color displays)
It's also a shame Nintendo discontinued the GBA form factor with the SP: no landscape form factor backlit/sidelit GBA sadly. (I preferred the AA batteries too: allowing quick change of low batteries on the go if you had spares -rechargeable or otherwise- or use of long lasting lithium cells)
Not only was the SP less comfortable to hold, but the buttons (face and triggers) and D-pad took a hit in quality that the DS followed unfortunately. (improved a little with the DS L+R but declining again with the DS lite's L/R buttons)
I've actually never had too much problem with the reflective screens (or even brick GB motion blur), though a lot of the color capabilities of the GBC and GBA were understated because of it (SP didn't solve that). Playing at night in a car or such was the only real issue. (the clip-on magnifier+lights for the GB/GBC/GBP were pretty useful though -that stupid plug-in coil light is worthless though)
buttons
Most important oldschool change was probably the transition from Joysticks to D-Pads and
second important the transition from 8-bit to 16-bit.
Newschool is for one harddrive storage (allows frequent and easy saving like the PC) and
wireless controllers of PS3 (because they can be charged while playing, on Xbox360 you've
got to put the controller away and charge the batteries, no matter if you are in the middle of
action).
Blast Pocessing
I'm torn. My first response would be 'seamless online integration' - I can buy games without leaving my house, and in a few button presses be playing that same game with someone from another country.
The other would be the fact that we're seriously starting to reach uncanny valley territory when recreating people in games; we're at the point where you can discern subtle shit like virtual peoples' facial expressions.
Probably PC gaming.
There is some things that you just cannot do with a controller that you can do with a keyboard and mouse.
I dare ya try playing Age of Empires II effectively with any sort of controller against someone that has a mouse.
What i really enjoy is that recent technological advancements made it possible for games to display
enormous lifelike sandbox game maps.
Normally you'd play games and they'd be pretty detailed, but then you can't get off the path to look around the corner,
but now you can, and it all looks good.
And now i play the waiting game for a cool sandbox like Jungle game, maybe Vietnam war or Indiana Jones like adventure stuff.
but the game makers.. they fear the Jungle ya know, they fear the complexity and all the trees.
they fear it!